


love hath no continent

by erebones



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 10:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17547701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars.





	love hath no continent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [losebetter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/losebetter/gifts).



> Heron is mine; Benny is losebetter's; Kel is alexdoodle's. Prompted by grey: things you said under the stars and in the grass.

Heron stirs awake on his back in the grass, a bit stiff from napping on the ground, and tries to get his bearings. He can hear Benny’s raucous laughter from the house, spilling out the open windows and rolling down the slope of the hill like distant bells. It sparks a smile in him, even though he doesn't know the source; Benny is just like that. Suffusing everything with the same sunshine-yellow cheer as his skin.

Overhead, the sky is velvet-black and star-strewn, each constellation glimmering like droplets of jewel-bright dew scattered across its vast expanse. He knows them all by name—many of them march across his own body in shades of blue and black, keeping count of his treading across the surface of the world. Even the faint glow of the kitchen light that trickles down the hill can’t extinguish them from sight.

Under Benny’s fading giggles he can hear the wind in the cherry trees at the corner of the house, the sigh as it moves through the long grass further downhill. And beyond that, the occasional clang and grunt from the sheep. He’ll be taking them to the upper pasture tomorrow, now that the lambs are grown enough for the journey. It’s a long hike; an entire day’s worth, if they encounter no trouble, and if the dogs remember their training. More realistically it’ll be a day’s journey up, a night in the crumbled old shepherd’s hut that crouches like a wizened stone troll in the foothills, and another day back down once the herd has been turned loose.

He’s running some last-minute calculations in his head when he hears the clatter of the front door opening and shutting and patient footfalls making their way down the stone path. They belong to Kel—he can tell by the weight of them, the steady certainty as he picks each step with care.

His suspicions are proved correct when Kel flops to the ground beside him and sighs contentedly, wiggling closer until their shoulders press together. “Fall asleep again, old man?” he teases.

“If I did it’s only because you wore me out this morning.” He can practically hear Kel’s pout. With a little chuff in the back of his throat, Heron turns and props himself up on one elbow so he can kiss Kel’s pretty mouth. One hand drifts to his chin, scuffing through his beard, and then trails south to toy with the laces of his shirt. The kiss breaks naturally, but he hovers, nose to nose. “Where’s Ben?”

“He’s coming.”

“Hmmm. Is he?”

Kel’s chest shakes with silent laughter under his hand. “Brat.”

“You’re one to talk.”

The door whines on its hinges and Heron bends to kiss Kel again, one hand slipping into his shirt to fondle the warm metal hoop he finds there. He hears Benny before he sees or feels him—hears the light clip-clop of his hooves tripping far faster than Kel’s steady gait, the swish of his tail in the grass. A moment later, Benny’s lanky form flings itself against Kel’s other side and Heron has to break the kiss for laughter.

“So this is where you went to,” Benny says. He reaches across the breadth of Kel’s chest to tangle his hand in Heron’s hair. The reach to kiss him is easy. He’s smiling, which makes it difficult, but he welcomes the lick of Heron’s tongue and the taste of him is sweet-tart like berries, like the soft inner bark of a willow branch in spring.

“Are we interrupting?” Kel asks when they part. His voice is already husky and low, and his hands are possessive on Heron’s waist, on Benny’s thigh. “Did you want some time alone?”

Heron shakes his head. “I already had it.” He lowers his head to Kel’s shoulder and smiles when Benny mirrors him and tangles their hands together in the middle of Kel’s chest. “I think I’m going to be gone for a few days.”

“A few _days_?” Benny sounds perturbed. “Will it really take that long?”

“I don’t want to rush them. It’s a new herd, for the most part. Only a few of the older ones know the way. The rhythm of things.”

Kel’s hum of understanding is a deep, sonorous rumble beneath Heron’s ears. “You’re sure you don’t want company?”

Heron meets Benny’s eyes, their faint glister lost to shadow even under starlight. “You have duties here. It would be selfish to steal you away.”

Benny tuts. “There’s nothing so important that can’t wait a day or two, unattended.” His thumb traces a soft back-and-forth pattern against the palm of Heron’s hand. “But I can tell you want to do this on your own, so I won’t press you.”

“It’s not—not necessarily _that_ ,” Heron demurs, even though it is. He sighs and nuzzles up under Kel’s chin, breathing him in, relishing the slight scrape of his beard against the bridge of his nose. “I’ll have the dogs. Everything will be fine.”

“We’ll miss you,” Kel murmurs into his hair.

“It’s only two days—”

“I know.” Kel tightens his grip on Heron’s shoulder and cranes a kiss to his brow. “Two days too long. Come back to us whole, you hear?”

“I hear.” Heron buries a smile against his neck, and feels an answering squeeze where his fingers lace with Benny’s. “I love you.”

 _Squeeze_. “We love you, too,” Benny tells him. There’s a beat or two of quiet. “Are you done staring at the sky, then? I want to take you to bed.”

“Oooh, yes, good idea. Goodbye sex—no, that’s depressing. Well-wishes sex?”

“Kel, that is also terrible.”

“Fine, what about… good luck sex?”

“What does that even _mean_?”

“Either, or, all of the above,” Heron interrupts before they can go too far down that particular rabbit hole. He sits up with a groan and reaches his arms over his head, stretching until his back pops. “Just as long as you leave me able to walk tomorrow.”

“That leaves us with so few options,” Benny laments, but he springs up like a jack-in-the-box nonetheless and hauls Heron to his feet with surprising strength. Heron returns the favor by hoisting him into his arms, leaving Kel to grumble good-naturedly as he finds his own feet.

“I have faith in your creativity.” Heron kisses him, humming at the feel of Benny’s tail sliding around his waist and Kel’s lips at his nape.

Overhead, the stars revolve, shining in their velvet web as steady as the tide. Heron likes to think they’re smiling down on him as he leads his lovers, hand in hand, inside the house and to bed.


End file.
